Cure for Depression
by April Rane
Summary: Uncharacteristic habits lead Edward to think that something is bothering Renesmee, and he is determined to find out what. Canon one shot.


_A/n It's dead week and my brain is fried. It needs a break. Hope you enjoy my brain break, inspired by the ballads of Ben Folds. I can't go into finals with a fried brain, you know..._

_Disclaimer: Not mine. If it were, I'd quit college and spend all my money on expensive cheese and wine that costs more than five dollars (oh, yeah, baby—Livingston and Boone's Farm). All snaps to the goddess, Smyer, the woman who made me look up "chagrin" in the dictionary._

Edward wandered down to the little annex of the massive house that had once been a school until he reached his destination. He sighed heavily as he heard the DVD menu for _Sleepless in Seattle_ looping and made his way through to the living room, recalling his earlier conversation with his father.

"_Do you think you can fix it?" Edward frowned down at the innards of his beloved Volvo as Rosalie reached for a different tool box._

_Rosalie laughed. "I may need to drop in a new transmission, but I think I can fix it just fine. I can fix anything." Her voice halted, and Edward heard her thoughts before he could focus on something else._

"_Emmett!" _God, I wish he'd stop staring at my ass and just do it. _"Jack, please."_

_Edward shuddered as Emmett laughed. "Sorry, babe." From his spot at her side, he jacked the car up a bit higher. His thoughts were, as usual, worse than hers, and Edward quickly excused himself to head back into the house._

_Days were always longer with Bella gone, but at the moment, she had been dragged to Juneau with Alice for some "much needed" shopping. Translation—Alice was about to force another wardrobe on her newest sister. Jasper had been dragged along as the pack mule, and he'd gone grudgingly, wanting to know why Edward got out of duty._

"_Because if I buy Bella anything sexy, I want it to be a surprise!" she'd said shamelessly, and Edward was quite sure that if his wife were still able to blush, she would have been puce._

_The upside to this was more time spent trying to decipher what was bothering Renesmee. At eight years old, she easily pulled off twenty-five and worked as a nurse at the same hospital as Carlisle. Carlisle spent most of his day with her, and had noticed lately that she seemed to be drooping a bit. He'd brought it up again last night while she'd been sleeping._

"_It's not something anyone else would notice but me. She's perky enough when she needs to be, but I've found her in the break room more than once looking a bit red around the rims. I couldn't find her at all today, and somebody said she was smoking in the ambulance bay. I wasn't even aware that she knew what cigarettes were, but somebody said she started up a few months ago."_

"_Sneaky little brat," he'd muttered. He'd raced down to her room and silently riffled through her purse, finding nothing. Next, the pockets of her scrubs from that day turned up empty, but he could smell Febreeze and something else on them. She was smart. She used the flowered kind that distracted him because it reminded him of Bella. Still, if he was looking for it, he could smell cigarette smoke on them._

_Today, on the pretense of having Rosalie take a look at his car, he'd slipped into his daughter's Porsche Cayenne and been hit by a barrage of Febreeze and smoke again. He looked in the center console and found a pack of cigarettes, half smoked with a lighter jammed into the pack. He'd frowned deeply, but put them back. As he headed back to Rosalie, he caught a glance at the recycling—there were more beer bottles there than he remembered there being. She'd never been much of a drinker—they discouraged it as much as they could, but when she looked as old as she did, it was awkward for her to refuse champagne at black tie dinners with Carlisle. Her driver's licence said that her name was Vanessa Masen and that she was twenty-five years old. Apparently, Vanessa Masen was showing up at the local liquor store more often than usually._

_Edward had talked this over with Carlisle, and his father had frowned deeply._

"_That's not like her at all," he'd muttered, looking troubled. "Something's wrong, certainly. Whenever I try to talk to her about it, she just comes up with some excuse to get back to work. Actually, I don't think I've ever seen her so obsessed with her work before."_

"_She's never brought it home before, either," Edward muttered thoughtfully. She was working harder than ever, much harder than any of the other nurses that worked with Carlisle. She was studying x-rays, reading and rereading copies of her patients charts. Her mind was constantly filled with everything there was to think about nursing, but he hadn't figured that she was blocking him out._

_She'd been going for walks at night, too, and he was confused by this. It wasn't something she'd ever done before, and she would come back thinking about the most random thoughts she could. He hadn't noticed this—he just assumed she was preoccupied. She'd been behaving this way for almost three months, now..._

Three months.

As he turned down the hallway that led to the living room, something clicked in his head. Three months ago, Jacob had headed off to college in Boston. The other side of the country. It was the first time the two of them had been so far apart for any length of time, and Edward had known it would take its toll on Jacob. He, however, had wanted her to be sure that she really wanted him and had wanted to open her up to the possibilities of a life with someone else, so he'd transferred to Boston for his last semester of college. Edward knew Jacob was a mess—it was clear when they spoke on the phone—but he'd not noticed that Renesmee was, too. She had always been like her mother that way, the kind to suffer in silence.

There was a fire lit in the living room, and it was the only light other than the TV. The screen showed a looping menu for _Sleepless in Seattle_. On the coffee table was a bottle of wine next to a wine glass with an ounce or two of deep red liquid in it. The back of the sofa was facing him, but Renesmee's scent wafted towards him from it, and he could hear her deep breathing. She was asleep. He stepped around the plush sofa and grimaced.

Under a blanket, still wearing her scrubs from that day at work, his daughter was curled around a box of Kleenex, one balled up in her hand. Her hair was down from the French braid he'd done for her that morning and her curls were a mess around her, and her face was tear stained. He glanced back at the coffee table, lifting the bottle of merlot in his hand. It was almost empty. This wasn't like her at all.

He'd been hunting all day, so he had no idea how long she'd been on the couch. Long enough that she appeared to have been watching _Die Hard_ at some point—Jacob's favorite movie. She'd gone from hardcore action to hardcore chick flick mode. In his experience, this was never a good thing.

Also on the table, next to the wine, was a mostly empty plate. He could smell the sugar that remained there from her favorite brownies from a bakery in town. There were two crackers left and a few cubes of cheese. Two of her favorite comfort foods. He understood the brownies, but he'd never understood her love of cheese and crackers. Gently, he pulled the Kleenex from her hands and tucked the blankets around her tighter before heading to the kitchen to see if she had actually eaten anything with substance.

The trash can contained several egg shells. An empty bag of shredded cheese lay next to the stove, where the skillet still held grease from her dinner. He could smell bacon in the air. Apparently it had been breakfast for dinner, another bad sign. She never did that unless she was too listless or tired to make anything else. Usually, then, she had Bella cook for her, but Bella was gone. At least she'd eaten a decent amount of food before putting away the wine. He glanced back in the trash to see how many eggs she'd used, then grimaced.

There was another empty wine bottle under everything else. It was the same bottle he recalled seeing in the fridge. It was the cheap stuff she and Bella used to cook with. It had been about half empty.

So she'd really had a lot, then.

Heading back to the living room, he turned off the television and lifted his daughter from the sofa. She whimpered a bit and snuggled into his chest like she used to when she was much smaller. Her fingers curled around his shirt tightly, and he pressed his face into her soft curls.

Her room was spotless as ever, the desk piled with folders from the hospital. Her bed was made, and he shifted her in his arms as he pulled back the comforter and sheet. He laid her down and started to pull away, but she tugged at his shirt harder, not wanting to let go. Edward smiled slightly as he stretched out beside her, running a cold finger across her flushed cheek. She relaxed slightly, and he rested his forehead against hers.

Her dreams were strange tonight. She was walking alone in the woods, cell phone in hand, and it seemed like she was waiting for it to ring. It never did, and she continued to wander in what he recognized as the wilderness outside La Push.

Grateful that tomorrow was Thursday, a day she always got off, he toyed with one of her bronze curls. Edward was beginning to realize that he had not seen her face so calm in months. She was relaxed in sleep as her dreams wandered to walking down First Beach. She was tiny again, and he recalled the memory she dreamed of. It was the first time Edward had walked down the beach at La Push, the treaty now allowing it as long as they accompanied Renesmee. She had raced ahead of himself and Bella and they'd watched in amusement as she'd dragged Jacob everywhere. In her dream, Edward watched everything from his daughter's view.

Bella had been wearing a blue sweater, his favorite color, and his fingers had twined around hers. She had stared up at him with love in her eyes and he'd been unable to resist leaning down for a kiss. He watched through Renesmee's eyes as Bella giggled, and he felt her unconscious pang of pain at the scene.

_Jacob. Jacob. Jacob Jacob Jacob Jacobjacobjacobjacob..._

She missed him. Edward mentally began kicking his own ass to Rio and back for his failure to notice this. She was jealous, he realized with a small shock. She was jealous of the love between her parents. She wanted that with Jacob.

Six hours later, her eyes fluttered. It was still dark, but it usually was at this time of year in northern Alaska. Her chocolate eyes were bleary and red and they focused slowly on his golden ones. She yawned, and her mouth sounded gummy. She rubbed her eyes with her fists like a small child, and Edward was reminded for the thousandth time that she really was still a child in so many ways. He half expected her to push away from him, but she smiled at the sight of him.

"Hi, Daddy," she mumbled. She curled up a bit closer to him, and Edward laughed aloud as he realized that she was trying to brown nose him. She knew that he knew she'd gotten hammered the night before, and now she was being his little girl, knowing that he was like putty in her capable hands. She really did have him wrapped around her little finger. She frowned down at herself. "I look like crap."

He laughed again. "I couldn't get you into pajamas. You seemed quite intent on seeing how tight you could hold onto my shirt." Frowning, Edward realized that she was thinking of random things again. "You can stop that," he said sternly, tapping her forehead. "You don't hide so well in dreamland."

Renesmee's cheeks flushed with chagrin. "Oh," she said quietly. Her thoughts changed, and Edward was hit by a barrage of depression that was staggering. Mentally, his daughter was a mess.

Edward wrapped his arms around her and pulled her up against his chest. "Have you told Jake any of this?"

She shook her head. "He just knows I'd rather he be home."

"Wanna tell me about it?"

Renesmee talked for almost an hour, and it shocked Edward how strong her feelings were. She missed Jacob, and it was becoming physically painful to her for him to be so far away from her. She felt like she was under water and suffocating. She was tired, she was angsty, she was worried that she was turning into an alcoholic ("Can half vampires turn into alcoholics, Daddy? It's not like it does any damage—Nahuel told me so once that our organs are like tanks."), she was jealous every time she saw her father kiss her mother and every time she heard them making love at night, when they thought she was sleeping, she hated going to work because Grandpa was always watching her with concern and it was getting harder to keep up her front. The list went on.

When she finally slowed, Edward squeezed her tightly in his arms. "Do you feel better, sweetheart?"

Edward could feel her nod against his chest. She heaved a shaky sigh as she considered asking him to make her breakfast. She was starved. Not giving her the chance to ask, Edward hoisted her up into her arms easily and carried her to the bathroom.

"You take a shower and I'll make you breakfast," he ordered teasingly. "What do you want?"

Rubbing her eyes again, Renesmee considered this. "Do we have more cheese?"

"We have an endless supply of cheese." He smiled teasingly at her. "You've been eating more of it than usual lately, if that's possible. At least that makes sense now."

She rolled her eyes, and he was struck again by how similar she looked to him. "Can I have an omelet?"

"Bacon?"

"Everything."

"A western it is, then." He kissed her forehead gently before heading back to the kitchen, closing the door behind him.

Fifteen minutes later, her breakfast was complete and she was sitting at the counter in a fluffy green bath robe, her wet curls hanging around her shoulders and down her back. She rolled up her sleeves and dug into her meal with enthusiasm. As she ate, he studied her face. She looked better today—happier, more relaxed, than she usually did. The vibrating of his phone interrupted his thoughts, and he rolled his eyes as he read the text message.

"What?" Renesmee managed to talk around the mouthful of egg.

"Your uncle wants to go paint balling." He tossed the phone onto the counter. He wasn't sure why Emmett had bothered with the text—he could hear him coming down the hall now.

"Cool." Renesmee took a bite of toast and Edward's eyebrows raised.

"You want to go?"

She nodded as Emmett rounded the corner, his face excited. "You're coming?" he asked Renesmee. "It'll be good for you, kiddo."

"I'll kick your ass," she said firmly, and Edward was so happy to see her spunk coming back that he completely forgot to chastisize her for her language. "And if I have trouble, Aunt Rose will help me. I'm her favorite." She smiled, her brown eyes twinkling, and Edward realized that he hadn't seen her smile for weeks.

"Battle of the sexes, eh?" Emmett laughed boomingly. "Bring it on, small fry." Renesmee chose that moment to use her deadly smile and baby face on her uncle, and he frowned. "Don't go there. You're going down." She continued to smile, and Emmett continued to frown.

"Good luck, Emmett," Edward said, rinsing off the pan and putting it in the dishwasher. "I've been trying to learn how to resist that face for eight years and I haven't had any luck."

As Renesmee turned back to her breakfast, Edward glanced up at Emmett. He was staring at his niece with a bit of shock.

_Is she okay?_

Edward nodded in response to Emmett's unspoken question.

_Good. I was starting to get worried about her. Did you figure out the problem?_

He nodded again, and walked around Renesmee to go clean up the mess in the living room. "I'll tell you about it later," he murmured, too quietly for her to hear, as he passed his brother.

Paint balling went better than even Edward expected. She and Rosalie massacred Edward and Emmett, but it was to be expected. Edward always paused when he came around the corner and saw his daughter smiling cheerfully at him, and Rosalie managed to distract Emmett with various sexual tricks that involved her not touching him. By the end of the day, they were all four covered in paint and the hay bales that had been set up were completely destroyed.

Renesmee was worn out to the point that she fell asleep during her dinner. She was curled up next to him on the sofa when Edward heard a car pull up and heard Alice's incessant chatter. Several minutes later, Bella appeared, laden with bags and looking annoyed. She smiled when she saw him on the sofa, and wrapped her arms around him from behind. Her lips were warm against his neck as she glanced down at Renesmee.

"She fell asleep," he explained needlessly. "We wore her out today."

"Doing what?"

"Paint ball with Rose and Em."

Bella's eyebrows raised. "You got her to paint ball?"

"Yes. We had a long talk this morning and I think she's going to be okay." Edward glanced down at the curly head of hair that was resting against his leg. "She needs to call Jacob and have a little talk with him."

A growl bubbled up from Bella's throat. "What did he do?"

"Nothing. She just misses him. She hasn't really told him that she needs him to come back."

Bella's face softened and she reached down to run her fingers across her daughter's hair. "My poor baby," she murmured.

The sound of Bella's voice and her touch roused Renesmee from sleep, and she peered up at her mother with sleepy brown eyes. "Hi, Mommy." She reached her arms up, and Bella scooped her into her own. Edward felt the dry burn behind his eyes that told him he would be crying if he could as he watched his wife and child. Bella rocked Renesmee in her arms as she carried her to her room. Edward followed slowly.

When he reached Renesmee's room, he stopped at the door. She was in her pajamas and tucked under the covers. Bella's forehead was leaned against hers and she was showing Bella their conversation that morning. One of Bella's hands held Renesmee's, the other toyed with her curls. Her thoughts gradually slowed as she fell back asleep, and Bella kissed her forehead.

"Goodnight, baby. I love you."

"Love you, too," Renesmee muttered. Bella smiled and tucked the covers around her while she stared down at her. She was immobile for several seconds, then, and Edward wondered what she was doing. Then an image of the two of them with Renesmee between them popped into his head, and he smiled as he heard Bella's thoughts.

_I love you. _She smiled at him as she got to her feet, not speaking so as not to wake their daughter. _Miss me?_

Edward nodded as he slid his arms around her waist, pulling her against him.

_We should buy Jake a plane ticket and tell him to come home now._ Edward was distracted from her silent conversation by her lips, which were pressing slow kisses against his throat. He knew her next thought was not something she intentionally aimed at him. _I want you so bad right now. _Then she shot an image of her wearing something Alice had bought her. He was plagued by the image of the blue lace that barely covered her full breasts and the part of her that he really wanted to touch right now. _Like it?_

He groaned softly, too softly to wake Renesmee, as he pulled Bella back into the hall. "Yes," he whispered. Then Edward lifted her into his arms, and she laughed silently as he carried her off to their room.

"Forever seventeen," she chuckled, and he lowered her to their bed to show her how a seventeen year old boy behaved in the presence of blue lace on a beautiful woman.

_a/n Review if you wanna. I need to start on homework again... Ugh._


End file.
